Blog Post #18

The on-the-job training provided for working as a correctional officer tries to use gender-neutral practices that are actually masculine in nature. This reinforces correctional work as gendered. It is true that everyone receives the same training for both male and female prisons because everyone is trained together, they learn the same material, and passes the same tests. However, it becomes gendered because the teachers over exaggerate the level of violence that exist within the job. This exaggeration scares many people away, mostly women. They sell the job as requiring toughness and aggressiveness, which are both considered masculine qualities. The truth is that violence like they are taught in class is very rare. When it is questioned if women can handle the job, the supervisors are concerning themselves with the “what ifs” that rarely ever occur. The job is mostly about managing people. One officer tells Britton that the hardest part of the job is not physical, it’s mental, and they are not prepared for that. This officer explains that the inmates are always trying to get one over on them.

The training they call generic or gender-neutral is actually masculine. It assumes that both the officer and the inmate are male. No one tells the women what it is really going to be like. No one explains that they may have to deal with sexual harassment and resistance from the inmates, and potential discrimination from their male counterparts. One of the female officers that was interviewed says she wished a female officer had come in a briefly told them what to expect. Also, most of the generic training is for high security prisons which are almost always male prisons, as many times women are in lower security prisons. These officers are not taught that the female prisons are completely different than male prisons. When dealing with women, a different set of skills needs to be utilized because the interactions are different. This masculine based training leads officers to see female prisons as “exceptions, and more lenient than male prisons.”